


Prompt thing #6

by grimmsmeatsticks



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Angst, Post-Divorce, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:51:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4929358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimmsmeatsticks/pseuds/grimmsmeatsticks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Bones’ wedding ring doesn’t fit. He takes it as a sign.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt thing #6

_Clink_

The sound of metal hitting the stone counter top of his motel bathroom sink snapped McCoy out of his morning daze. He looked down in confusion and saw his wedding band sitting on the counter. It had slipped off his finger.

He frowned and picked it up, automatically looking it over for any damage before putting it back on. It didn’t feel right. He brought his hand up to look at it again. Slowly he realized that his ring was sitting loose and was clearly too big for him now. He toyed with it and watched how it would loosely spin around his finger. 

The surprise wasn’t that he had lost this much weight. He knew very well that he was in pretty bad shape. He didn’t eat or sleep right, and lived mostly fueled on liquor and coffee these days. All of his clothes hung loose and ill-fitting on him. He had gone down two whole pant sizes ever since she walked out on him. All of this he knew already. What surprised him was that he hadn’t  _noticed_  that his ring was getting too big.   
  
He would take his ring off in a lot of situations: for surgery, for cooking, when he showered. He had always done that. Since day one of their marriage. Rings were notoriously bad places for bacteria to gather and he had always had almost a hang up about taking it off when he needed to get his hands into something, or even just remove it daily to clean underneath it. He would, however, always put it back on as soon as possible because he felt naked without it. He didn’t feel like Leonard McCoy without that ring on. This to such an extent that he still wore it over a year after she had abandoned him and left him to rot in his own misery, with nothing but divorce files to keep him company at night. Pretty shitty goddamn company, obviously. 

He would never stop wearing that ring, he had told her when she had taken hers off and all but thrown it at him. “We belong together, Joss,” he had said, “and you’ll realize that and come back to me.”

He had promised to never take it off, but now he realized that it had been almost a month since he last felt the need to put it on. He didn’t know what had urged him to reach for it again this particular morning, maybe a glitch back to an old habit, but he felt it meant something that he hadn’t worn it for so long without even noticing his bare finger. 

The ring didn’t fit him anymore. 

He hesitated for a moment but then he took it off again and set it down on the edge of the sink. “Guess that’s it,” he grumbled to his own tired, aged reflection before he left the bathroom to go grab his bags. He had a shuttle to catch. 


End file.
